Ten years, the second month, and the thirteenth day after the Battle of Yavin…
Or the forty-fifth year, the second month, and the thirteenth day after the Great ReSynchronization.
(Eight months and thirty-three days since the moment of arrival).
The Karthakk Resistance arose during the Imperial period and for a long time operated as an independent unit, carrying out raids on Imperial caravans and supply lines.
Formed "on the fly," it nonetheless earned the respect of the Alliance to Restore the Republic for managing, with its own funds, to create its own armed forces—a small but mobile army and fleet.
After some time, they joined the Rebel Alliance proper, but their participation in the Galactic Civil War was not marked by anything particularly noteworthy.
For the most part, they were engaged in patrolling their own Karthakk sector and did not take part in battles outside their home region.
In truth, no one expected more from them—only two Corellian CR90 corvettes and a single, miraculously acquired Nebulon-B escort frigate were hardly the kind of force one takes into major engagements.
Given that two major regional hyperspace routes—the Llanic Spice Run and the Triellus Trade Route—passed through the sector, traffic in this part of the galaxy was quite brisk.
Illegal, but brisk.
For a small sector like Karthakk, which contained only eleven relatively well-known and charted star systems, three combat ships represented a rather impressive force.
Basing themselves in the Ord Selbus system, once a regional ammunition depot for the Pius Dea Crusades of the Old Republic, the local defense ships proudly bore the name Sector Forces.
Karthakk sector.
Since that time, the number of starships had increased tenfold—now the locals boasted as many as four identical Corellian corvettes and two escort frigates.
But the long-awaited peace that was supposed to arrive with the fall of the Empire never came to Karthakk.
As it turned out, the absence of Imperial patrols in the sector—once a regular sight along the hyperspace lanes—had a disastrous effect on the crime situation.
Numerous pirates and other unsavory types who had ended up in the Outer Rim quickly realized both the quantity and quality of the local defense forces.
And they were not afraid of six armed ships crewed by local activists.
In the opinion of the adventurers, the game was worth the candle.
Karthakk always offered refuge or something substantial for smuggling or piracy.
The mere fact that magravian spice—highly prized by smugglers—could be mined on the planet Magraviya already justified all the risks.
Llanic, known throughout the Outer Rim as a shadowport where all manner of semi-criminal and outright criminal deals took place, likewise attracted criminal elements.
No matter how hard the local military tried to put an end to the chaos, they were catastrophically short of strength.
The New Republic, to which they had only nominally pledged allegiance, dutifully demanded recruits and volunteers for its own service and swallowed up taxes that, while not the largest, were still painfully felt by the sector.
Yet only a handful of times had it bothered to send battle groups to sweep the area and at least pretend that local crime concerned them in the slightest.
It was no wonder, then, that the sector government finally discovered the limits of its patience.
Political upheavals in the New Republic that had begun about six months earlier—endless military defeats and scandals dogging the central authority on Coruscant—prompted the government to declare its secession from the New Republic.
Though, just as their accession to that state had meant nothing to the republicans busy divvying up power, so too did their secession carry no weight.
The Karthakk activists decided to pursue a neutral policy, correctly assessing that worlds and systems belonging to the New Republic were the ones coming under attack by Grand Admiral Thrawn.
Not wishing rumors of sighted Imperial Star Destroyers in the sector to prove true, the sectoral government preferred isolation from galactic events.
Slowly but surely, they tried to rid the sector of crime—though with extremely modest success.
Captain Nym, ruler of the eponymous system in Karthakk, might have been able to help—but he had long since made his position clear: what happened in the galaxy did not interest him. His little empire—the Karthakk system—was the limit of his ambitions, and the rest mattered not at all.
Any attempt to draw him to the side of official authority ended badly—at best, the envoys simply never returned.
And no one was willing to risk their starships to drive Nym out of the Karthakk system, fully aware that in the future, once the leader of the Lok Revenants rid himself of the motley bands of pirates and raiders besieging his system, he might yet take an interest in helping protect the sector.
But when that would happen—no one knew.
So they had to manage on their own.
And this time, having learned from traders of suspicious starships appearing in the Zobber system, the sector fleet set out to carry out a large-scale operation.
Command had little doubt that they had finally located the pirate Jerresc and his gang.
The Quarren responsible for the disappearance of nine large New Republic cargo ships (not counting several dozen smaller ones) was the biggest headache for the local defense forces.
This pirate was the primary target of every armed unit in the sector.
His identity often became a stumbling block in dealings between the local government and the New Republic.
The latter demanded the pirate's head, while the people of Karthakk could only shrug helplessly.
They lacked both soldiers and ships to mount a proper hunt for the pirate band.
But today luck had smiled on them.
So they moved out toward the Zobber system, ready to unleash their full wrath on the bandit scum.
And very soon it would happen…
They only needed to cross the Musson system, then another two days of travel—and they would be there.
The hyperspace jump ended abruptly.
The tunnel of light collapsed into a scatter of stars, and the six ships of the Karthakk sector emerged into realspace.
The first thing that caught their eye was an Imperial Interdictor-class Star Destroyer, in the gravity well of whose interdiction field they had been yanked from hyperspace on the edge of the system.
And the battered ships clustered around it, actively trading fire with an enemy and fending off the fighters and gunboats pressing in on them.
The second—and no less important—was that the ships now found themselves in the midst of a furious battle between two enormous fleets.
The moment their hyperdrives shut down, turbolaser bolts, anti-ship missiles, and swarms of fighters began streaking past their vessels…
Yet not one of them targeted the Karthakk ships, even though the sector's starships, in their panic, had fired on the nearest vessel with turbolasers and laser cannons.
There were no hull breaches, of course—the powerful deflector shields absorbed all the damage.
But a hurricane of ion cannon fire—which ships of that size could scarcely produce—quickly silenced two of the four Corellian corvettes.
In the combat information centers of the remaining sector ships, battle-station klaxons wailed, crews raced to their posts, and aging fighters prepared to launch from their racks.
All that remained was to decide which of the two sides was the enemy.
"Evasive maneuvers! Now!" ordered the formation commander, seeing that the first seconds of the engagement had not gone in his favor.
On one side—no fewer than two dozen Imperial Star Destroyers with escort ships, which had surrounded on three sides another starfleet trapped in the center of the system.
Four of them—Victory-class Star Destroyers—were positioned behind the Karthakk sector ships, and it was into their fire that the group yanked from hyperspace had nearly blundered.
Yanked by the Interdictor holding position slightly ahead and to the left of the Karthakk forces and the Imperials, projecting a wide cone of artificial gravity within which the enemy ships were being mercilessly pounded from all sides.
And, upon closer inspection, it turned out the Imperials were fighting…
More than two dozen Vengeance-class frigates led by a pair of Aggressor-class Star Destroyers.
The commander of the Karthakk sector forces stood on the bridge of the flagship Nebulon-B and could not utter a word.
"It's…" the executive officer who had stopped beside him said weakly. "It's…"
The senior officer finally regained the power of speech.
"You're right," he rasped. "Those are Zann Consortium starships. And the insignia are the same as before that filthy criminal organization was destroyed."
"Looks like they didn't get them all," the XO said.
"Looks like the Imperials decided to correct that oversight," the senior officer replied vengefully.
Before his eyes flashed memories of the atrocities committed by Zann Consortium fighters who, just a few years earlier, had with almost no resistance brought several planetary governments in the sector under their control, attacked and destroyed the base at Ord Selbus, and—purely to mock them—damaged but did not destroy the sector forces' starships.
"Sir, we're being hailed," came the report from the comm station.
"Who?" the senior officer asked quickly.
"The Star Destroyer Steel Aurora, sir," the comm officer explained, pointing to one of the four Victory-class Star Destroyers that had opened up an incredible rate of turbolaser fire from both upper and lower hemispheres on a fleeing Consortium frigate.
"What kind of destroyers are these, anyway?" was all the formation commander managed to say before a hologram of a young officer in distinctive Imperial uniform appeared before him.
Imperial, but… not quite.
"Captain Kalian, commanding the Star Destroyer Steel Aurora, regular fleet of the Dominion," the man rattled off. "Who are you, and for what purpose have you arrived in this system?"
The formation commander stared at the executive officer in shock.
But the XO could only spread his hands—he understood nothing either.
The Dominion?! Here?!
"I am the commander of the Karthakk sector forces," the formation commander introduced himself. "We had information that smuggler ships had appeared in the Zobber system. We thought they were pirates…"
"No, something far worse is here," Kalian grimaced.
He glanced somewhere off-screen, then barked at one of his subordinates:
"Hard to starboard—ninety degrees! Batteries one through twenty—fire!"
The Steel Aurora, past whose bow but one echelon below the Karthakk ships had emerged (and which had now moved almost safely alongside the destroyer's flanks), began to pivot, presenting its port broadside to the enemy.
After loosing twenty anti-ship missiles, the destroyer, on its captain's command, began swinging back to present its bow to the enemy once more.
"You have two choices, sector forces," the young ship commander said. "Either help us finish off the Zann Consortium ships, or get the hell out of here. Your two corvettes disabled by my ion cannons are in our tractor beams and aren't going anywhere. And we could use some more light forces—these frigates are highly maneuverable and packed with rapid-fire guns."
The formation commander exchanged glances with the XO.
"We'll join you," the commander decided. "Please mark our ships as friendlies and assign us a position in the order."
"That's more like it," a crooked but genuine grin appeared on Kalian's face. "Fall in below my Victories—we'll cover the hulls and reactors along with the DP20s. These bastards keep trying to ram us and take us with them."
The commander of the Karthakk sector ships shuddered, remembering that this was exactly how the sector resistance's only Rendili Dreadnaught heavy cruiser had been destroyed several years ago.
***
"Has the Zann Consortium really sent this many ships after the ones who hit their convoys?" the thought flashed through Captain Vivant's mind as turbolaser fire from his flagship Star Destroyer Endurance knocked the shields off a Vengeance-class frigate creeping up on a neighboring destroyer.
The ship, unexpectedly catching a barrage of turbolasers and ion cannons, exposed its port side—the emitters of its cloaking field burned out.
An instant "ping" on the Dominion scanners proved fatal for that starship—the gunners of the Endurance left the enemy no chance of achieving its objective.
Whatever those objectives had been.
Vengeance-class frigate.
Unlikely to have been noble ones.
One does not, out of kindness, try to slip under the belly of a Star Destroyer that is firing on one's comrades.
Did the enemy hope to blow up its own ship near the reactor and thus disable the starship?
Or did they plan to approach an open hangar bay and unload their entire arsenal into it?
And that arsenal was no joke.
Four triple-barreled rapid-fire mass-driver cannons, two turbolaser batteries.
Fire a salvo from such an arsenal into the tender innards of an Imperial-class—and the ship would detonate from within and at the very least be forced out of the fight.
At worst—turn into a thermonuclear flash.
But the threat to the Striking Sword ceased to exist.
At least for the moment.
Yet the battle had only just begun.
The trap had been perfectly set, yet nearly failed.
The Zann Consortium transport ships captured at Kail II had been delivered to the Zobber system in the Karthakk sector.
The Black Pearl, arriving here, had acted as bait, provoking the enemy's appearance.
But although gravitic sensors confirmed their presence in the Karthakk sector and movement toward Zobber, the enemy did not arrive at the calculated time.
Nor did they arrive late.
The whole thing smelled of failure—something Vivant could not allow.
So he took a risk—without waiting for the enemy ships, he moved the Constrainer to the Musson system ahead of schedule.
This went against the plan, under which the enemy was supposed to enter Zobber, where Captain Kalian's Task Force Alpha—four Victory III-series Star Destroyers—would surround and engage them.
Then Task Force Beta, led by Captain Nalgol aboard the Tyranny, would spring the trap and physically hold the enemy in the system, while Task Force Gamma under Vivant's personal command, together with the Constrainer, would complete the encirclement and seal the system.
But everything turned out far simpler.
Buzz droids long ago scattered throughout the Karthakk sector registered the enemy stopping in the Tarkenia system, located between Zobber and Musson.
Only a few parasite droids managed to latch onto the enemy fleet's ships, but it was already clear that their hyperspace jump had been made not toward Musson, but toward Llanic—the nodal system of the two largest hyperspace routes in the region.
From there—they could go anywhere.
No more doubts—the enemy was leaving the sector.
The ambush plan had failed.
And now, instead of luring the enemy onto Task Forces Alpha and Beta and finishing them with Gamma, Captain Vivant moved to the Musson system to intercept the fleeing Zann Consortium ships with the forces of Task Force Gamma alone.
Sometimes the universe delivers extremely unpleasant—but all the more painful—surprises.
Vivant learned this the hard way.
Trying to rehabilitate himself after his previous failure in the eyes of the Grand Admiral, he decided to use the ships of Task Force Gamma—ten fresh Imperial-class Star Destroyers and one Victory salvaged by Commodore Shohashi in the Battle of Brentaal IV and upgraded under the "Troika" program, together with a dozen CR90 Corellian corvettes from screening forces and one Interdictor—to finish off the enemy.
And thereby claim all the glory of victory over the Zann Consortium fleet for himself.
Now it turned out that it was precisely the eleven destroyers of Task Force Gamma that would have to take the brunt of the criminals' fleet on themselves.
While Captain Kalian's Task Force Alpha of four Victory IIIs and Captain Nalgol's Task Force Beta of six Imperial "Troikas" and four Victory IIIs would arrive and finish the enemy off.
That was exactly what happened.
Fifteen Vengeance-class frigates, three Aggressor-class Star Destroyers—and all of it against Vivant's twelve ships.
It seemed the battle was lost, for the ships, ripped from hyperspace, quickly oriented themselves and switched to stealth mode, vanishing completely from Dominion scanners.
But it turned out better than expected.
Taking himself in hand and mentally swearing to every deity in the galaxy that the cowardice he had shown would never again be his path, Vivant cast aside defeatist thoughts.
Yes, the ships were cloaked.
Yes, they had stealth fields.
But that was not a panacea.
If only because the perfect stygium-based cloaking technology was clearly not as good as advertised.
Because signals from Project Morrt buzz droids attached to several ships of the Zann Consortium fleet still transmitted their locations.
And they became perfect targeting beacons for the Star Destroyers of Task Force Gamma.
Two Vengeances and one Aggressor—a decent opening for a battle that had not gone according to plan.
Three ships in thirty minutes of fighting was a pretty good result, achieved with a cool head.
But it led to the Shining Star taking a hit—an ion blast followed by a plasma charge—from the Aggressor's main battery before its destruction by the Star Destroyers' salvos.
Partially depowered, stripped of deflectors, most of its sensors gone, and charred like the void itself, the Shining Star slowly limped toward the Constrainer as new starship signatures appeared on the scanners.
"Eight new contacts, Captain!" reported the watch officer.
"Identify!"
"Recognition… They're ours, sir! Eight Victory 'Troikas'!"
Enveloping what was assumed to be the enemy formation's rear in two equal wings, the ships from Task Forces Alpha and Beta, seeing no enemy, received all necessary data.
"Sir, but they're not incorporeal," said Captain Kalian from the Steel Aurora after his report.
Kalian and Nalgol had proved slightly smarter than he.
Using the advantage of the Class-A hyperdrives installed on the Victories, they had raced ahead, hurrying to the aid of Task Force Gamma.
Realizing that both commanders, of the same rank as he, had in similar circumstances shown greater nobility than he had made Vivant feel utterly wretched.
Burning inside with shame and rage at himself, he did not immediately grasp what was being discussed.
Then he understood.
"All ships—ion cannon fire!" he ordered.
"Targeting, sir?" the senior gunner on the Endurance perked up.
"All around the ships!"
The idea was as simple as the galaxy itself.
A cloaking field was an energy veil, not a physical one.
Therefore, by analogy with knocking down deflector shields, ion cannons could breach those fields and reveal the enemy ships.
For the first few minutes, firing blindly yielded no results.
Then a shot from the Endurance that struck beneath the belly of Quick Strike—the sole Victory in Task Force Gamma—did not dissipate but found its long-awaited target.
A Vengeance-class frigate had been creeping toward Quick Strike's underside like a predator stalking prey.
The disrupted integrity of the cloaking field led to the ship's detection and immediate fire from every barrel on its hull.
The result did not take long.
Vengeance-class frigates lacked deflector shields—only cloaking fields.
But their hulls were sturdy enough to withstand heavy fire from a ship a class above.
Yet they also possessed one extremely unpleasant feature.
A self-destruct system that tore the tiny frigate apart with incredible force, damaging everything in close radius.
The commander of Quick Strike managed to react to the detonation, having already blasted the ship and noticed its hull locking up and beginning to glow, shifting the color of its plating to shades of red.
One of the best-known "symptoms" of an impending detonation of this ship type.
Detonation required every last drop of energy the ship could produce.
Thus the starship lost speed, moving only on residual inertia, and ceased firing.
To maximize damage, excess energy of such voltage was routed through the power conduits that the hull glowed.
After detonation, it turned into shrapnel.
Quick Strike avoided the fate of having the frigate blow up next to its reactor, pulling away with maneuvering thrusters.
But it could not escape the shockwave and debris that inflicted some damage to its starboard side and stern.
It caused no major problems…
Except that the anti-ship missiles that had not had time to be emergency-jettisoned detonated in their launch tubes.
Crippled but not destroyed, the Star Destroyer lost half its armament on the mangled side.
Quick Strike looked as though a giant beast had taken a bite out of its starboard flank along with the armor plates.
Smoking and spewing debris, the ship left its position, firing in all directions.
Vivant ordered two additional squadrons of interceptors sent to it, seeing "the wounded animal" being set upon by swarming Skiprays and StarVipers.
In the next instant he was informed of the arrival of another capital-class starship.
"The Colicoid Swarm has ceased patrol and arrived to render assistance," reported the comm officer.
Mentally calculating how long it would take the ship to reach the most advantageous position, Vivant ordered:
"Colicoid Swarm is to cover Quick Strike's withdrawal to the Constrainer," the Endurance's commander directed. "Assign four squadrons to screen Providence."
"Sir," the watch officer addressed him. "The Colicoid Swarm has launched an armored Gozanti-class transport and two squadrons of vulture droid fighters. Captain Irv states he requires no screening from our forces…"
"Two squadrons and a freighter to screen the Colicoid Swarm?" Vivant asked in surprise. "The order stands."
The battle was gaining momentum.
The enemy was acting ever more desperately and recklessly.
Scimitar assault bomber strikes knocked out the plasma cannons on both remaining intact Aggressors.
All those two ships could now do was strip destroyers of their shields.
Unpleasant, but not fatal.
The enemy fought without regard for losses.
Like fanatics who knew no fear and did not fear death, they stubbornly pressed into the thick of the fire.
And the loss of destroyer deflectors began to tell.
Despite numerical and qualitative superiority, the enemy managed to inflict multiple suicidal strikes with fighters and interceptors.
Despite the arrival of the remnants of Captain Nalgol's Task Force Beta, Vivant ordered contact broken with the enemy and withdrawal to the edge of the gravity well.
Mass-driver cannons were becoming the bane of the fighter squadrons.
One could clearly see the difference between clone pilots flying Scimitars and HG-1s and the pilots who had once served the Imperial Remnant and Moff Gronn.
Among the latter—losses were the highest.
Only the selfless counterattacks of the gunboats allowed the ships to withdraw without losses.
The enemy also did not waste time.
Realizing that only the Constrainer held them here, they began pressing toward the lone Interdictor.
The thick armor of the Vengeances allowed them to ignore massive salvos—at least for a time.
Corellian corvettes and frigates thrown into counterattacks to delay the enemy even slightly suffered heavy damage and fell back to the capital ships, serving as stationary turrets until repairs were completed.
Vivant watched the enemy brazenly demonstrate the superiority of rapid-fire mass-driver artillery against Dominion fighters.
He also understood that at this rate of expenditure, the Vengeances would simply run out of ammunition soon.
So it was no surprise that they took hits to preserve the Aggressors.
When Kalian reported the arrival of the Karthakk sector forces, Vivant at first did not understand—one of the frigates had detonated, mangling and snapping off the Wyvern's bow.
Not the most serious damage, but that ship would need repairs for some time as well.
"Kalian's right," he finally said. "Let them screen the Victories. Missiles are the best thing we can treat them to right now."
A wild thought flashed: "Maybe the 'Troikas' aren't as good as we expected?"
With such an arsenal and already an hour and a half of fighting, they still hadn't destroyed the group.
But sober calculation replaced panic.
The Zann Consortium ships were making full use of cloaking and not all of it could be stripped away. Thankfully the reactors couldn't maintain invisibility indefinitely—otherwise things would have been bad.
Thick armor was what allowed even the frigates to hold out for so long against turbolasers.
But missiles…
Missiles were something else entirely.
Kinetic projectiles stung the enemy starships, rendering their defenses useless—provided, of course, the mass-drivers didn't shoot them down on approach.
But in any case—the Victories and the Colicoid Swarm spat out so many missiles that losses to enemy point-defense were not particularly significant.
In turn, this allowed the Scimitars to make dashes and inflict substantial damage on the Zann Consortium starships.
No, the "Troikas" were indeed powerful.
Their beam weapons performed their task no worse than the consortium's mass-drivers.
It was simply that their pilots… lacked sufficient experience for such battles against a professional enemy.
Look, the Karthakk pilots hadn't exactly shone either—in a couple of clashes with Zann Consortium pilots, they had all perished.
Dominion pilots had lost about a third of their interceptor squadrons so far. Strike gunboats and fast bombers—only a handful.
Missiles were the best weapon against ships of this type in the Zann Consortium's arsenal!
The battle flared with renewed fury.
Both Aggressors received "fiery greetings" from the Scimitars, and their ion cannons went offline.
The Dominion Star Destroyers could now breathe easier.
The generators hidden beneath the armor slowly began building power, restoring the ships' energy shields.
"Tighten the ring," Vivant ordered.
Breaking contact had been necessary to buy time to react to the enemy's main battery salvos.
Now that the Aggressors were deprived of that advantage, the initiative was once again with the warriors of the Dominion.
During the battle, the Dominion ships had completely encircled the enemy, pounding him from maximum effective range to avoid friendly fire.
Now the combat-capable ships—except for the Colicoid Swarm—moved forward, taking advantage of their wedge-shaped hulls and the upgraded armament layout in both upper and lower hemispheres.
The fiery snare became a tightening noose around the remaining enemy.
After losing another five frigates in attempts to ram the Victories, the enemy became prey.
Fifty minutes after the last order, the distance between the oncoming Dominion ships had shrunk to seventy-five standard units.
Such range allowed aimed ion cannon fire on the battered and nearly disarmed enemy, sniper-like picking off the remaining weapon emplacements of the Zann Consortium ships now at thirty-five to thirty-seven units from the Dominion starships.
Only two starships—one frigate and one Star Destroyer—remained combat-capable.
The rest had already been shot to pieces and destroyed.
Enemy aviation had been wiped out entirely.
And nothing short of a miracle could now save the cornered "beasts."
But today miracles in the galaxy were off duty.
"Offer the enemy surrender on an open channel," Vivant ordered. "Cease fire until we receive a reply."
"Sir, they're fanatics," the watch officer reminded him.
"That doesn't change the fact that among them there might be someone who values life over death," the Endurance's commander reasonably countered.
The surrender offer was accompanied by a collective cease-fire against the enemy starships.
But Vivant ordered the long-range jamming station left active.
For communication within the system, the equipment aboard the enemy ships and their own was sufficient.
"Yes—yes—yes! We surrender!" came a relieved voice from the intercom, the Aggressor's commander. "Please don't kill us. Our ships, crews, information—everything is yours. We have a lot of valuable information! Save us, please! We don't want to die."
"Crews are to stand down, power down systems, and prepare to receive boarding parties," Vivant ordered.
He looked at the watch officer, who appeared utterly bewildered.
"Looks like they've seen the light," he said. "Realized dying is pointless. You were right, Captain."
"We'll see," Vivant shook his head. "Prepare Gamma-class assault shuttles. Two of them. Set up remote control via droid pilots."
A deep crease appeared on the watch officer's forehead.
"But we have pilots…"
"I'm aware, XO," Vivant cut him off, feeling a growing worm of doubt inside. "Carry out the order."
"Yes, sir," the man said with a shrug.
The Endurance's commander glanced at the cage of ysalamiri, remembering the presence aboard capital ships of one very specific category of scanners.
"Load each Gamma with as many ysalamiri as would be required for a full crew and a full boarding complement."
"It will be done, sir," the XO said, now thoroughly confused.
Vivant himself was thinking of something else.
He had spent enough time on Lok to have heard a couple of highly instructive tales about Grand Admiral Thrawn's conquest of the Karthakk system.
He might not be the best formation commander, but after this battle he had certainly become more cautious.
And far more distrustful.
Ten minutes later both shuttles launched from the Endurance's flight deck and streaked toward the damaged enemy ships.
They were escorted by six TIE interceptors that remained at twenty units' distance when the assault shuttles headed for the enemy vessels.
"Attention fleet," Vivant opened a channel to the other Star Destroyer commanders. "Pull fighters, corvettes, and frigates out of the blast zone. Batten down hangar armor doors. Stand by to roll ship ninety degrees along the bow-to-stern axis."
Despite obvious astonishment from the ship commanders, the order was obeyed—after all, he had managed, if not perfectly, to instill in them the lost habit of obeying a superior officer.
"Commander, wait a moment," the same Zann Consortium fighter's voice. "The docking clamps are jammed, we're fixing it."
"Our ships remain docked to yours," Vivant said in an icy tone, realizing what was about to happen.
The worm of doubt had grown into a monstrous serpent when he saw the thermal signatures of the three trophy ships—unable to escape the system—begin to rise.
"Fleet—roll! Screen all small craft behind the upper hemisphere!" Captain Vivant did not order but roared.
By the time the fanatics detonated their starships, deciding to take as many enemies with them as possible—even if fewer than before—all the Dominion Star Destroyers were already presenting their undersides to the Zann Consortium vessels.
Only with reconnaissance droids was it possible to capture the moment of the simultaneous detonations.
Debris scattered over a considerable distance.
Much of it damaged the lower hemispheres of the Star Destroyers, but dents and minor breaches were a small price to pay for coming out with light losses.
"Entry in the ship's log," Captain Vivant said slowly. "'Any negotiations with Zann Consortium fighters are nothing more than a ruse to lure our forces into the self-destruct radius.' End entry. Ships are to commence system sweep, search for downed pilots, and capture of enemy equipment samples. Every trophy is to be checked three times before being brought aboard a destroyer. Look for explosive devices, beacons, transmitters—anything that might leave a trace."
"Sir, how did you know?" the watch officer stared at him in amazement.
"I didn't know," Vivant admitted. "I only assumed that if I were a fanatic serving the Zann Consortium, I would use the offer to surrender to kill as many enemies as possible."
"Understood, sir," the watch officer said, swallowing hard. "Orders?"
"Prepare all recordings from our spy droids in the system," Vivant directed. "I want a complete picture of what happened to attach to my report to Grand Admiral Thrawn. And yes—you're new aboard Endurance. Don't forget the standard procedure: release Project Morrt buzz droids in the system. And add our new Project Droch models. Ensure the commanders of all starships follow this protocol."
"Yes, sir, of course… But," the XO hesitated. "Why?"
"Let's see if the Zann Consortium commanders want to send someone to the site of the massacre to figure out what happened," the Endurance's commander explained. "And get in touch with the commander of the Karthakk sector ships. I'd like to know what they were really doing here and how they learned about our decoy transport ships."
***
Having listened in turn to the oral reports of Captains Kalian, Nalgol, and Vivant regarding the concluded battle in the Karthakk sector, I lingered on the last.
When the two holograms vanished, I looked into the eyes of the volumetric copy of the man toward whom I now felt mixed emotions.
On the one hand—anger that, in his thirst for recognition, he had intended to expose the other two task forces to danger in order to play the "finisher" himself.
And thereby nearly let the enemy escape.
Given that an entirely different scenario had been envisioned—luring and destroying the enemy with a single coordinated strike in one system.
No division into task forces or gradual entry into the system had been planned.
A single blow, one fist.
But, in fairness, that had been my vision of the battle.
Captain Vivant had been given a strategic objective.
Its tactical implementation was entirely at the discretion of the operation's commander.
The choice had fallen on Vivant as the most suitable (until recent events) candidate for promotion.
Since any outcome of the battle suited me—complete victory or partial, with several ships escaping and reporting to Tyber Zann's leadership that we were coming straight for his tail—I had not placed particular hopes on the engagement.
The battle in the sector was not limited to merely inflicting damage on the Zann Consortium fleet and sending a signal to Tyber Zann that we were breathing down his neck.
Nor was it solely about identifying the leadership qualities of ship and task force commanders.
I also needed to test the crews' training and familiarity with their equipment, the combat effectiveness of the new ships upgraded under Nick Reyes's supervision rather than Ryan Zion's.
And most importantly—to conduct trials of our "Troikas" against Zann Consortium starships.
The fact that Zann had sent ships of his own organization rather than using the Corporate Sector fleet—which boasts more than five hundred Victories alone—spoke volumes.
As did the quality of the starships we faced.
On the other hand, swinging the saber and punishing a subordinate for completing the assignment not as I would have wished and nearly letting a retreating enemy slip away would be, to put it mildly, foolish.
Whether the Force had intervened or it was simply the correction of Vivant's mistake, the fact remained.
Had the captain executed my vision of the ambush—gathering all forces at Zobber—the enemy would have escaped and no battle would have occurred at all.
Distributing the task forces under his command throughout the sector within reach of the final route allowed him not only to cut off the enemy's escape paths.
But to delay, surround, and completely annihilate them.
Yes, ships were damaged.
Yes, servicemen perished.
But we weren't playing in a sandbox here.
Donning a military uniform means understanding that your life is tied to war, not moonlight strolls.
One must be prepared to learn, to prepare for war, and to accept that you can be wounded, maimed, or even killed.
If there is no understanding that after any battle your life may never be the same again, then one should not take the military path.
There are plenty of vacancies in the civilian sector.
In fact, those very words (almost exactly) were contained in a counterintelligence memo summarizing the introductory lecture given by Admiral Trommel, who had assumed leadership of the teaching staff at the Captain Schneider Academy.
It had been delivered to a new cadet intake and perfectly reflected the essence of what was happening.
Needless to say, after his speech a third of the cadets submitted requests for discharge.
Well, one could call it natural selection.
Better they leave now than infiltrate military units, bearing responsibility for others' lives, only to scoff at the truth delivered in simple and accessible form by an experienced admiral.
One must work—and serve—by calling and the heart's command.
Not masquerade as someone climbing the military ladder for higher pay and privileges, only to hide behind a desk and request rear-area transfer the moment real combat looms.
The farther from the front, the better.
Such individuals provoke nothing but disgust.
There are few of them, in truth, but they shout the loudest, creating the false impression that these are the voices not of isolated weaklings but of the majority.
But that, again, is a lyrical digression.
More important is something else.
Captain Vivant had not feared responsibility for failure, realizing that his cowardice would doom the entire operation.
He had taken measures to correct the situation.
And he had solved the problem.
And how…
Moreover, what impressed me most was that in his report he honestly and openly admitted intending to sacrifice Kalian and Nalgol to "reap the cream."
The faces of the first two task force commanders at that moment were something to behold, of course.
But such a confession in the presence of comrades, coupled with acknowledgment that he had planned to earn "forgiveness" for his earlier failure in ship preparation, was something few would have expected…
I least of all, to be honest.
In all the months I had been here (nearly a year now), I had encountered all kinds of military commanders.
Brave, valiant, clever, vengeful, those who swallowed their pride and chose between personal interest and duty, those who stood their ground, those who schemed to avoid punishment…
But to simply lay it all out like a confession…
Yes, only a mature man fully aware of his mistakes is capable of that.
And one who takes steps to correct them—what he had managed to do confirmed it.
"You have done a great deal of work, Captain Vivant," I said, breaking the drawn-out silence.
"Thank you, sir," he replied. "But I committed an unforgivable act, attempting to sacrifice my comrades to advance myself. It nearly doomed the entire operation."
His voice was calm but emotionless.
The man was morally exhausted.
Yet he saw the job through to the end.
"There is a great difference between a mistake and a failure," I said.
Vivant frowned.
"A failure cannot be corrected by one's own hand; it is the final state of affairs," I explained. "A mistake is not a failure if it can be corrected. You corrected yours. That does not absolve your base motives, which you placed above the assigned task."
"No, sir, it does not," Vivant said, his head drooping.
"However, you corrected your mistake and admitted it," I continued. "And you did so not privately but before the comrades you intended to use. Such conduct… is proper. You did not scheme to hush it up by confessing to me alone. You conveyed full information to your comrades, unafraid of the consequences."
Vivant was silent.
"Your interpersonal relations with the commanders of Steel Aurora and Tyranny are not my concern," I went on. "What to do next with your cowardice toward them and their subordinates is for you alone to decide. I can only say that there are no irreparable situations—you have demonstrated that with your own example."
Vivant nodded silently.
"Now to the details," I said. "Your battle report, including all materials, will be studied carefully. Your brief assessment of the situation?"
Vivant looked at me uncertainly.
He seemed to expect annihilation here and now, yet instead of a disintegrator the executioner had handed him a microphone.
"Appendix Seven," he said. "I attached comparative charts to my report…"
"Brief," I reminded him.
"Yes, sir," he twitched an eye nervously. "In summary, we faced exactly the same ships the Empire and Republic fought when the Zann Consortium was not considered destroyed. Which is strange, given that we have already encountered upgraded Keldabe and Crusader types, yet for some reason the upgrades did not touch the Vengeance and Aggressor classes. The reason—objective—is unclear to me. From analysis of the collected wreckage, we can conclude these ships were built roughly one to two years ago."
"Whereas the newest Keldabes and Crusader we captured were built earlier," I thought.
"That is, there is a stockpile for upgrading some ships but not others," Vivant continued. "Strange selectivity. Especially since the effectiveness of these ships is also questionable. The Aggressor's ion-plasma twin mount was never reliable and is easily knocked out, after which the ship effectively becomes a target."
Absolute truth.
"The Vengeance-class frigate is also outdated," Vivant said. "Its mass-driver cannons posed a threat only to pilots with little combat experience. And even then—only in the first half-hour of battle, when the heaviest losses were suffered. Destroying a single target requires a large number of projectiles, not to mention that such weapons demand far more energy than rapid-fire batteries. These starships could have been dangerous—if they had been upgraded. But they are not."
Of course they are not.
"Continue."
"Using cloaking fields against a lone opponent or small force is reasonable," Vivant said. "But against an equal or superior force, any task force can easily disrupt a cloaking field with ion cannons or turbolasers. One need only damage the field emitter—and the target appears on scanners. With such energy expenditure and short field duration, it would have been wiser to refit the ships for deflector shields. It would also improve speed."
A sound observation.
"Anything else in the 'priority' category, Captain?" I asked.
"My full opinion is in the report, sir," he stated.
"What losses did the Karthakk sector forces suffer in the battle?" I inquired.
"Three CR90 corvettes and one Nebulon-B escort frigate destroyed, the rest heavily damaged," the Endurance's commander reported.
"Did the Karthakk forces inform you of the reason for their presence in the system?" I asked another question.
"They received a tip that ships—presumably smuggler or pirate—were in the Zobber system," Vivant replied readily. "Cross-referencing the timing of the message receipt and the arrival of our decoy freighters indicates the message reached the Karthakk forces five minutes after the ships arrived there. But the system had been seeded with reconnaissance and buzz droids. There were no observation devices or transmitters present. Determining exactly how the information became available to the Karthakk forces is not possible at this time."
"Your position is clear, Captain," I said.
"If you wish, I can begin an investigation and identify the source of the leak," he offered eagerly.
"There is no need," I said. "That information was passed to them by agents of our intelligence service through recruited local residents."
Vivant's face shifted from passive to astonished excitement.
"May I ask why, sir?" he inquired.
"So the people of Karthakk could see with their own eyes that the Zann Consortium—which committed no small number of atrocities on their territory in the past—is still alive," I explained. "They suffered losses after deciding to participate in the battle. Now their sector is weakened and in need of protection. We can offer it. In exchange—for joining the Dominion on standard terms."
Vivant nodded in understanding.
"Convince them, Captain," I continued, "that joining the Dominion and hosting our military base on their territory would be the best decision they have ever made."
"Me, sir?" the man asked in surprise.
"Precisely you, Captain," I confirmed. "You have already proven you can admit and correct your mistakes. Now prove you can achieve results without resorting to excessive force. Do this—and your past missteps and failures will be forgotten."
Vivant was silent for exactly one second.
"Yes, sir," he said firmly. "I will do it."
"I have no doubt, Captain," I said, shutting down the holoprojector and beginning to read the reports.